(Why is Comixology's search function so useless? If I click on Sean Murphy's name, it should only take me to issues he's participated in, or even better issues he's illustrated the interiors of. It shouldn't take me to titles he's participated in at some point and hope I'll wade through hundreds if not thousands of issues looking for his specific issues.)

Two former federal agents (DEA, Secret Service) are expected to be arrested on Monday on charges of stealing money while working undercover on an investigation into Silk Road, the once-thriving black market website for drug dealing, a document shows.

...

“stole and converted to his own personal use a sizable amount of Bitcoins,”

DEA/USSS lesson via #bitcoin : Your agents probably steal cash all the time and this is the 1st time you had a chance of catching them.
— Alan Silbert (@alansilbert) March 30, 2015

Either Ortiz is grossly exaggerating how often he has been tested — possibly by a factor three or four — or Ortiz is telling the truth, he has been tested as often as he claims and the reason for it is that he is or has been “in the program” for previous drug offenders and we just didn’t know about it.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

a venture capital-backed private bus service began operating in San Francisco that directly competes with public transit for “regular commuters who are doing a predictable route every day.”

...

This is perhaps the most magical side effect of the new category of services made possible by the convergence of a new kind of logistics, a chronically underemployed labor force, and apps: It allows society’s most influential class to remove themselves from civic discussions at will.

John Fish, chairman of Boston 2024, the private group that organized the bid, announced Tuesday morning that the group would seek a statewide vote and even help gather the signatures required to get the measure on the ballot. Mr. Fish, who is also chief executive of the region’s leading construction firm...

Officials at both the United States Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee have strong aversions to ballot measures because they can amount to highly public rejections of something they hope to depict as prestigious.

In the heat of a very hot news moment last summer, I criticized a Times story about the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I want to acknowledge that I misjudged an important element of that story.

...

Giving implicit credence to the named sources who described Michael Brown as having his hands up as he was fired on by Officer Darren Wilson, I criticized the use of unnamed sources who offered opposing information: They said that the officer had reason to fear Mr. Brown. I even went so far as to call those unnamed sources “ghosts” because readers had so little ability to evaluate their identity and credibility.

Somewhat relatedly, here's Last Week Tonight's episode on the type of crushing fines used in Ferguson:

Perhaps most unsettling are the shark and octopus storylines: The octopus path ends when a shark doesn't fall for your ink-spewing trick, and it finds your calamari body delicious. Alternately, while inhabiting a shark's body, you can eat an octopus who ineffectively tries to use ink to escape.

Are ... are you eating yourself?

Yes, you're almost certainly eating yourself. That's some serious multiverse-level mind-screwing for a book aimed at 10-year-olds.

Someone was targeting Chris not out of a sense of justice, but because they wanted to destroy his success. The campaign may also have been one of several efforts we’re aware of to discredit ComicsAlliance. These are not the tactics of progressives concerned about harassment in comics, but of agitators looking to tear down progressive voices — of which Chris is certainly one — using methods of harassment. (Notably, the messages referred to D’Orazio as “David’s wife,” rather than recognizing her as a person in her own right.)

No doubt these people also see themselves as the heroes of their stories. They are not. We cannot lend legitimacy to their behavior.

Jacoby Ellsbury, the first major leaguer of Navajo descent, is proud of his heritage and his speed. The New York outfielder was just 8 years old when his mom told him about the dragonfly, a Native American legend that his grandfather had passed down to her. As Ellsbury recalls it: "If you catch a dragonfly without killing it and rub it on the bottom of your feet, it will make you faster."

As the HUD Secretary, Cuomo presented himself as the spokesman for the nation’s poor, travelling around the country to show that, even in a time of prosperity, many people were left behind. He was given to fierce denunciations of those who, in his opinion, used federal dollars to mistreat the vulnerable. In 1997, the department sued A. Bruce Rozet, a HUD landlord, accusing him of taking kickbacks from a management company called Insignia Financial, which ran his buildings. According to a press release from HUD, which was cited in a 2006 Village Voice story, the department’s mission was to provide housing for the needy—“not to provide lives of luxury for con artists stealing from our programs.” Cuomo called the case “the largest ever brought by HUD” and condemned “the abysmal conditions” that he said tenants were forced to endure in projects that had been “poorly maintained” by Insignia.
...
After the election, Cuomo’s marriage disintegrated, in a rancorous battle chronicled in detail by the local tabloids. The divorce was eventually settled, without litigation, but Cuomo found himself an outcast—single, unemployed, and repudiated by the New York political establishment. His salvation began in an unlikely place. He was visiting a real-estate executive in New York, and another prominent businessman happened to be in the office—Andrew Farkas, who had been the chief executive of Insignia Financial, the company that Cuomo denounced in such strong terms as HUD Secretary.
...
Cuomo went to work for a new commercial real-estate venture that Farkas established, and, as the Times has reported, he was paid more than $2.5 million in three years.
...
When, in 2006, Pataki decided not to seek a fourth term, Eliot Spitzer, who had enjoyed great success as the state attorney general, had a clear shot at the governorship. Cuomo decided to run for attorney general. The finance chairman of his campaign was Andrew Farkas.

Carol Leonnig's recent Washington Post story about two U.S. Secret Service agents drunkenly running a car into White House barricades and over a suspicious package may not be as dramatic as was initially reported.

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